“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” ― John F. Kennedy
Open government and community-based monitoring share the same principles: making public management more effective by including citizens in the decision-making process. The two concepts, however, have significant differences which, in a previous comparative analysis, I argued can be translated into mutual learnings but also into valuable lessons for local governance, such as the importance of institutionalized international spaces to provide technical and financial support, without losing the local perspective; the urge to apply participatory approaches in many, if not all fields of local policy; the need to use diplomatic mechanisms and the legitimacy component to pressure governments to use the data resulting of such participatory processes; the incorporation of the academia to create baselines and evidence-base policy; and the necessity to carefully evaluate the implementation time for each local program (Ponce, 2022).
A decade after its launch in 2011, the Open Government Partnership has reach 76 national governments and 80 local jurisdictions who follow a unique methodology: before joining this initiative, members are required to meet eligibility criteria regarding fiscal transparency, access to information, public official asset disclosure and citizen engagement (Open Government Partnership, n.d.). However, the main characteristic of OGP is the requisite to co-create, along with local civil society, biannual action plans containing specific commitments to address citizens’ needs based on the pillars of transparency, citizen participation, and collaboration. These action plans are finally evaluated by a local researcher designated by an Independent Review Mechanism, to define learnings and recommendations for the next action plan (Open Government Partnership, n.d.). Considering this, in previous work I also argued that open government can contribute to important development issues like the political crisis of citizen indifference and disconnection of governments, “one-size-fits-all” solutions, the difficulty of consensus and compliance in international spaces, and the unquestioned power of the Global North, by providing a new paradigm for governance that includes different stakeholders (Ponce, 2022).
Though, this model is also subject of critiques. For example, the flexibility to locally design action plans leaves space for political propaganda, and the specificity of commitments can lead only to effortless and superficial programs (Berliner, Ingrams, & Piotrowski, 2021). Additionally, the two-year basis for action plans can be incompatible with ongoing elections (Piotrowski, 2017). Some authors also find challenge in measuring this model’s effectiveness as it deals with some broad and subjective concepts like public value (Wirtz & Birkmeyer, 2015) and it requires a major cultural and organizational transformation in public administration (Hansson, Belkacem, & Ekenberg, 2014; Ozlak, 2013). In this paper I specifically address the model’s shortcomings in terms of citizen participation. In this sense, participatory process leading to the adoption of open government initiatives are sometimes considered lacking political will and adequate resources, which leaves out a variety of stakeholders and limits citizen input in policymaking (Fraundorfer, 2016; Noveck, 2010). In addition to this, the assumption that citizens are willing to participate is seen as too optimistic (Ozlak, 2013).
These critiques coincide with broad evidence provided in literature regarding the lack of incentives for citizen participation, as people prefer to let others get involved and still benefit from this participation, unless having an additional incentive or coercion (Olson, 1965; Ostrom, 1998; Elster, 1985; Kathlene & Martin, 1991). In this sense, some authors are sceptic of citizen participation as they consider it costly, ineffective, and naïve (Callahan, 2007). However, participatory methods have been implemented since the 1950’s and the debate is no longer between direct and participatory democracy, but rather focused on which participatory method is better (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004).
Despite this, citizen participation is a complex issue, and the literature on the subject still lacks definite evidence about its benefits (Callahan, 2007). For this, authors have debate possible explanations to the different outcomes of participatory process, like the size, wealth, and heterogeneity of the community, as well as its level of decentralization (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004; Devas & Grant, 2003; Olson, 1965). Others explain that citizen participation has been traditionally seen from a customer role, increasing passiveness and self-motivation in citizens’ behavior (Ho, 2002; Welch et al., 2005, as cited in Simonofski, Vanderose, Snoeck, Crompvoets, & Habra, 2017). For this, authors advocate for a value-center model that sees citizens as investors rather than as mere users of public services (Callahan, 2007). Moreover, this paper adopted the model of Kathlene and Martin (1991), which classifies the limitations to participation from the perspective of citizens, policy makers, and design. Other limitations provided in literature were added to these categories.
The methodological framework to this paper is the Comparative Case Study, according to Yin’s work (2009), who explains that this method lays within the critical theory paradigm to look for evidence about how and why different factors led to different outcomes across time and space. The methodology relies on research questions to select cases and individually analyze them, as well as displaying different data distribution to look for possible patterns and explanations.
In this comparative case study, I evaluate the effectiveness of six OGP local action plans in incorporating public input into policy making, as well as to explain the factors leading affecting this participation. Community-based monitoring standards and literature regarding the limitations to citizen participation provide a new perspective which is contrasted with the information contained in the evaluations made by the Independent Review Mechanism, as well as local articles for each case.
Is open government as participatory as it claims to be? Results show that many of these cities’ commitments did not involve the community and only few gave citizens a proteogenic role. Also, common limitations for citizen participation were identified throughout the study like a lack of incentives for citizens to participate (Olson, 1965; Ostrom, 1998), a questioned representativeness of civil society organizations and NGOs (Devas & Grant, 2003), a biased selection of participants (Coglianese, 2002), an unwillingness of public officers to share power with citizens and other state agencies (Callahan & Yang, 2005), a self-perception of bureaucrats as technical experts, lack of evidence on the inclusion of public input into the decision-making process, a lack of clear roles (Kathlene & Martin, 1991), a customer model (Ho, 2002; Welch et al., 2005, as cited in Simonofski, Vanderose, Snoeck, Crompvoets, & Habra, 2017), and top-down approach, especially in e-government initiatives (Anthopoulos, Siozos, & Tsoukalas, 2007).
This blog post summarizes my master dissertation from below.
Webinar Invitation
For the ones who would like to find out more on this topic, I invite them to attend the webinar on the 30th of September, at 3:30 pm (Brussels time) in this Blackboard room. After I present the research results of my master thesis, we entertain an interesting discussion about open governance and its links with community-based initiatives.
About the author
Carolina Ponce has more than 5 years of experience in open governance and citizen engagement and is the Co-Founder of Hazte Escuchar and N1 Centavo Menos. She has recently graduated with distinction the IOB's Advanced Master of Government and Development.
References
Anthopoulos, L. G., Siozos, P., & Tsoukalas, I. A. (2007). Applying participatory design and collaboration in digital public services for discovering and re-designing e-Government services. Government Information Quarterly, 24, 353–376. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2006.07.018
Berliner, D., Ingrams, A., & Piotrowski, S. J. (2021). Process effects of multistakeholder institutions: Theory and evidence from the Open Government Partnership. Regulation & Governance. doi:10.1111/rego.12430
Callahan, K. (2007). Citizen Participation: Models and Methods. Journal of Public Administration, 30(11), 1179-1196. doi:10.1080/01900690701225366
Callahan, K., & Yang, K. (2005). Trainning and professional development for civically engaged communities. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 10(1), 1-15.
Coglianese, C. (2002). Is Satisfaction Success? Evaluating Public Participation in Regulatory Policymaking. KSG Working Paper RWP02-038, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=331420
Devas, N., & Grant, U. (2003). Local government decision-making, citizen participation and local accountability: some evidence from Kenya and Uganda. Public Administration and Development, 23, 307-316. doi:10.1002/pad.281
Elster, J. (1985). Rationality, Morality, and Collective Action. Ethics, 96, 136-155.
Fraundorfer, M. (2016). The Open Government Partnership: Mere Smokescreen or New Paradigm? Globalizations, 14(4), 611-626. doi:10.1080/14747731.2016.1236463
Hansson, K., Belkacem, K., & Ekenberg, L. (2014). Open Government and Democracy: A Research Review. Social Science Computer Review, 35(5), 540-555. doi:10.1177/0894439314560847
Irvin, R. A., & Stansbury, J. (2004). Citizen Participation in Decision Making: Is It Worth the Effort? Public Administration Review, 64(1), 55-65. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00346.x
Kathlene, L., & Martin, J. A. (1991). Enhancing citizen participation: panel designs, perspectives, and policy formation. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 10(1), 46-63. doi:10.2307/3325512
Noveck, B. S. (2010). The Single Point of Failure. In D. Lathorp, & L. Ruma, Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice (1 ed., pp. 51-72). O’Reilly Media, Inc. doi:978-0-596-80435-0
Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: public goods and the theory of groups (Fifteenth ed.). Harvard University Press.
Open Government Partnership. (n.d.). Action Plan Cycle. Retrieved from https://www.opengovpartnership.org/process/action-plan-cycle/
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